Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe 
by 

Lee Smolin

 

Reviving the Old Traditions

Time Reborn is an erudite, intense, but nonetheless respectful polemic about the fundamental structure of the universe. Its claim, if I understand it correctly, is simple: the first ‘substance’ of the cosmos is not space, energy, or matter but time. Time is not another dimension of space, or an illusion of material consciousness; it is a reality that generates all else that we experience, and indeed beyond that to everything that happens.

I am not qualified to judge whether what Smolin has to say concerns physics or metaphysics, that is whether his view is a scientific hypothesis subject to experimental verification or a existential presumption which is self-verifying once adopted. But what I can note with some confidence is that it is an idea with a long pedigree even though it has been presented historically in very different terms. 

In Orphic myth, for example, the progenitor of all the other gods is Chronos, the god of time (not to be confused with Cronos, a mere Titan). Chronos with his daughter Ananke (don’t ask!) split the Primordial Egg from which emerge the other gods and the rest of the cosmos. 

Several hundred years later, Plato in the Timaeus would define time as “the moving image of the eternal according to number.”* What he meant by that is certainly debatable but one coherent explanation is that everything else in the creation of The Craftsman (God) is placed within time in order for these things to exist at all. Even for Plato, therefore, time drives existence itself (or is the cradle of existence if one prefers) in a manner not dissimilar to the Chronos myth.

In the biblical Book of Genesis, the first (or Priestly) story of creation was largely composed in the same era as the Orphic myth. In this story, the first creation is Light which is immediately separated from the Darkness, thus generating day and night. These are created before the Sun and the stars. Thus the first day’s divine work is the creation of time, confirming the Greek idea of time as the primordial substance of the universe. 

Remarkably, Lee Smolin believes that both the pre-Socratics and the ancient Hebrews had it right: “Nothing transcends time, not even the laws of nature.” From time everything else flows. The implications of this proposition are astounding, and not just for physics.

Among other things, the hypothesis of primordial time means that every so-called truth - scientific, social, logical, theological, physical, spiritual - has a sell-by date attached. There are no eternal truths (presumably even that one is subject to evolution at time’s discretion). If Time Is King then we will never understand it fully because we are contained within it just as the Greeks suspected. And wasn’t even YHWH surprised when his creation didn’t work out as intended (not once but three times), suggesting an established (although possibly unconscious) recognition of divine subservience to time?

Perhaps the potential dominance of time is the real reason behind the religious objections to Darwinian evolution, which Smolin refers to as “the prototype of thinking in time.” What’s offensive to the the evangelicals is perhaps not so much the idea that not all species were created at once, but that God himself evolved, a possibility that Scripture clearly confirms within both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian addendum, as well as in the transition between the two. If Darwin is perceived as a impending spiritual threat by these people, Smolin represents the apocalypse which already has happened. 

Smolin is concerned that we don’t take his hypothesis to imply relativism. I don’t understand why. He clearly states that everything about reality is relative to time with no exceptions. The exception he wants to make is actually no exception at all. When he says that… 

“Truth can be both time-bound and objective when it’s about objects that exist once they’ve been invented, either by evolution or human thought.”

… isn’t it clear that what he is referring to are only linguistic expressions of a certain type, namely definitions? The principles of mathematics are indeed objective, eternal, and absolute, but only because they are defined the way they are. Such definitions include not only the number 5, for example, but also the species Homo Sapiens and all other linguistic categories. Words are unavoidably defined only by other words. And even these will be periodically re-defined to suit evolving human purposes.

With these views, Smolin echoes those of the great American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (whom he cites). Peirce was the first to propose that the apparent unpredictability of events is not due to insufficient data or observational error but is an inherent feature of the universe. He called it “tychism,” to designate a permanent randomness in cosmic behaviour. Smolin is, therefore, channeling Peirce when he says, “Surprise is inherent in the structure of the world.” 

Peirce also provides the logical justification for Smolin’s proffer of hypotheses in a world with changing natural laws. How is it possible to rationally construct guesses about the way the world works if the way the world works is changing? Peirce formulated his principle of “synechism,” a normative (not existential) presumption that there may be some ultimate knowledge toward which scientific inquiry is striving as a continuous method for dealing with discontinuity.

One of the central presumptions of modern science is that the universe wants itself, or at least allows itself, to be known through specialised and expert human inquiry. In Smolin’s way of thinking, this becomes merely a human conceit. The universe is ultimately inscrutable, which should be obvious since, being part of it, we can never observe it in its totality. 

This implies that every scientific theory and explanation we create is not simply temporary and corrigible but ultimately fictional. They are stories we tell, probably to make us feel more secure in a world that we know will finally consume us. That some of these stories work better than others shouldn’t distract us from their fundamental character. None have a happy ending.

It may be that the Greek Heraclitus had the enduring key to all inquiry when he suggested not just that “Nature loves to hide,” (as Smolin notes) but also that “Nothing endures except change.” (which he does not). We cannot step into the same stream twice after all.

So to search for stable knowledge in the obscure details of subatomic particles or arcane string theory may not be the most rational strategy of inquiry. Perhaps the most important discoveries are waiting in plain sight and experienced by everyone. Intellectual humility might be the only essential virtue of not just the scientist but the authentic human being, that is, one who doesn’t readily believe his own press.

Perhaps Smolin should keep in mind that Chronos was intentionally confounded in Greek myth with his progeny of decidedly different character, Cronos. Whatever concept of time is eventually agreed by scientists, it too will be as unstable as Chronos according to Smolin’s theory.

* A little clarification is helpful with this definition. For Plato, as for Thomas Aquinas centuries in the future, eternity is not an infinite series of moments but a entirely timeless category. What Plato seems to be saying is that in every moment we have a glimpse of the eternity in which God exists but with an entirely different mode of existence than that which exists in time. It is time, therefore, which allows and simultaneously restricts existence for created beings. It is the metaphysical ocean in which we swim and that provides us existential nourishment. Any prospective entry into the eternal requires an ontological transformation, an extraction from the cradle of time. Creatures are not capable of this on their own, indeed if at all. This seems to me an alternative way of making Smolin’s point that we are not intellectually permitted to think of ourselves outside of time. This is equivalent to presuming either that we do not exist or that we are divine. Also, keep in mind that for Plato numbers are eternal forms. When he says “according to number” he is not assigning numbers to moments but moments to the eternal scale of numbers. The “image” he refers to is one of these eternal forms, numbers. Thus time is not a measure of change. It’s not a measure of anything at all. It is something sui generis, that is, entirely of its own sort. This too is implied by Smolin. Perhaps it might be productive to think of time as a primal force through which change occurs. Just a speculation.